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So, What’s Up with the Oil Spill?

-Though we ridiculed Florida senator Bill Nelson for asking, not rhetorically, about the obviously influence the oil industry wields at the Minerals Management Service, this report—with juicy off-the-record quotes from grudge-bearing agency scientists—on the agency’s suppression of environmental-impact studies is still genuinely harrowing. The institutional culture goes back at least a decade, but much of the damage done by the agency’s drill-happy managers was done in the last year and a half.

Meanwhile…

-Comically anti-nature Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski (previously) yesterday blocked a vote on a bill that would raise the liability cap for oil companies following a spill. To protect smaller oil companies, she says.